President Donald Trump

One of the bizarre features of much of the criticism of President Trump is how completely wrong-headed it is. For example, most Leftist sites on the internet depict Trump as a maniac eager to start a war. How they will deal with this should be amusing:

President Donald Trump agreed on Thursday to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un by May after Kim pledged to refrain from further nuclear tests and move toward denuclearization, according to South Korean officials.

The surprise announcement was made by South Korean National Security Advisor Chung Eui-Yong in a short statement outside the White House. The White House later said no firm timetable was set.

Chung said that in recent talks with South Korea, Kim Jong Un “expressed eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible.”

A senior administration official said the sentiments from Kim were conveyed verbally to Trump during a briefing in the Oval Office at the White House on Thursday, denying the existence of a physical letter from the South Korean envoy to the president, which was reported earlier.

The White House confirmed that Trump would accept Kim’s invitation to meet, but a senior administration official told reporters on a call after the announcement that “at this point, we’re not even talking about negotiations.”

“What we’re talking about is an invitation by the leader of North Korea to meet face to face with the president of the United States,” the official said. “The president has accepted that invitation.”

Go here to read the rest. One of the keys to understanding Trump is that he views himself as a master negotiator. Virtually everything he does is an attempt to drive his adversaries to the negotiating table where he thinks he can prevail. This really should be obvious, but the Left and the Media have had precious little inclination to examine Trump dispassionately, and that lack of such analysis has helped Trump throughout his career. Much of what Trump does I suspect is an attempt to cause his adversaries to misunderstand him. Trump fans believe that he is a genius always playing fifth dimensional chess. I don’t believe that, but I do think he is sharper than most of his critics and adversaries, and that has worked to Trump’s advantage, time and time again over a very long career.

Third longest State of the Union Address in history. Could have used a fair amount of cutting, but delivered well. As usual with these type of speeches, a lot of general proposals and few specifics. What did you think?

President Trump will be giving his first State of the Union Address tonight, and it should make for good television. Some of the lamest members of the House Democrats have pledged to stay away, thus elevating the tone of the proceedings. Other female Democrat members of Congress are attending, but wearing black to protest Trump not having castrated himself or something. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not be attending, speaking in Rhode Island instead. Her old friend Justice Scalia would have agreed. He thought the Justices should not be props at the State of the Union address and hadn’t attended one for more than 20 years prior to his death in 2016.

As for the speech, it will probably touch mainly on three main topics: the economy, the economy and the economy. The number of times a President mentions the economy in a State of the Union address is usually a pretty good barometer of how the economy is doing, and Trump has a fair amount to crow about. If his usual mode for set piece speeches is followed, Trump will give a pretty good speech, and all the headlines tomorrow will be about what Trump tweeted a few hours after the speech.